Thursday 20 August 2020

Book ~ "The Secret of Bones" (2020) Kylie Logan

From Goodreads ~ Assembly Day at St. Catherine's dawns bright and cloudless as professional woman gather from all around Ohio to talk to the schoolgirls about their careers in medicine, at NASA, and as yoga instructors. Administrative assistant Jazz Ramsey is involved herself, giving the girls a taste of her lifelong passion: cadaver dog training. Her adorable new puppy Wally hasn't been certified yet so she borrows the fully-trained Gus from a friend and hides a few bones in the unused fourth floor of the school for him to find.

The girls are impressed when Gus easily finds the first bone but for the second Gus seems to have lost the scent and heads confidently to a part of the floor where Jazz is sure no bones are hidden - at least not any that she's put there. But Gus is a professional, and sure enough, behind a door that shouldn't have been opened in decades, is a human skeleton.

Jazz recognizes the skeleton as Bernadette Quinn, an ex-teacher at the school who'd never returned after one Christmas break, though letters and postcards from her had seemed to indicate there was no cause for worry. But now it seems Bernadette never left the school at all and her hiding place makes it clear: this was murder.

Bernadette's strident personality means there are a plethora of suspects inside the school and out of it, and as Jazz gets closer to the truth she can't help but wonder if someone might be dogging her footsteps.

Jazz works as the admin assistant at a small Catholic all-girls school in Cleveland.  On the side, she trains cadaver dogs.  She is showing some of the students how cadaver dogs find dead bodies and instead of finding the bone that Jazz has hidden, Gus, the cadaver dog, finds a skeleton in a room that supposedly hasn't been used in years.  It turns out that it's Bernadette, a teacher who had resigned three years ago just before Christmas.  Bernadette was an oddball who was teased and tormented by students, didn't socialize with the other teachers and was in the process of being let go from her teaching position when she "resigned".

This the second book (and latest) in the Jazz Ramsey Series by this author (I read the first one a couple months ago).  It works as a stand alone as there is enough information provided.  I liked the writing style and thought the story was interesting ... there's a surprise twist at the end.  It is written in third person perspective with the focus on Jazz.  Except in the beginning and Jazz walking her puppy, Wally, dogs don't have a big part in this book.

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